She stood in line beneath the thrust of the transport’s stub wing but had not yet reached the ramp when someone screamed and pointed.
People around her stopped talking, and several wandered out of line, walking toward the north parapet of the pyramid. In the west, the peak of the conical mountain known as An-Kur—“God Mountain”—was…glowing.
“What the hell?” Carleton said, turning on the ramp ahead of her to stare back at the sight.
“It’s a volcano!” a young media rep shouted.
It was no volcano, that much was obvious. To Nichole, it looked as though the top of that far-off mountain had just peeled itself open, and now a pinpoint of light brighter than the local sun, brighter even than Earth’s sun seen from Earth, was shining out of the cavity within.
The blue-white thread of light snapped on abruptly, connecting the mountain peak with the sky at a ten-degree angle from the vertical, a beam so bright that Nichole covered her eyes as more of the watching civilians screamed or yelled.
An instant later a soundless flash blossomed in the deep green of the sky.
Long seconds passed, breathless, and then the shockwave from the mountain reached them, a dull, thundering rumble and a gust of heavy, heat-scorched air. The flash in the sky had faded to a scattering of starlike embers, slowly fading.
Only then did the enormity of what had just happened sink in. “Goddess!” she cried. “They’ve destroyed the Emissary!”
And then the panic set in atop the Pyramid of the Eye.
7
22 JUNE 2138
Briefing Room 401
White House Subbasement, Level D
Washington, D.C., Earth
1425 hours ET
“They’re coming in over the walls now!” the Marine cried, his eyes wide and staring. He couldn’t have been older than twenty. “They’re inside the compound and closing in on the pyramid!”
The young Marine’s face filled the darkened briefing room’s wallscreen, which stretched floor to ceiling across one end of the cool, wood-paneled chamber. A number of men and women sat at the long table, watching quietly. The atmosphere was heavy with emotions ranging from grim acceptance to shock.
“We got the last of the civilians out a couple hours ago,” the Marine continued. “There’s a place in the mountains east of here—an Uhsag village the scientists’ve managed to make contact with. We might be able to hold out there for quite a while.
“Of course, ten years is a long time. And maybe you guys—”
Moisture trickled down the huge face on the wallscreen. It was impossible to tell whether it was sweat or tears, but his eyes were glistening. He broke off, then shook his head.
“Screw that. Anyway, if you send relief, watch out for AnKur. That’s the big, lone mountain ten klicks west of the compound. There’s some kind of god-weapon there, a big son of a bitch, hidden inside the top. We had no idea it was there. It picked the Emissary right out of the sky, one shot. Don’t know what the range is, but it’s at least five hundred klicks. I…I…damn it! They’re supposed to be primitives here! What are they doing with a freakin’ planetary defense system?”
A loud explosion banged nearby, and voices could be heard in the background, shouting commands, yelling response. The Marine looked around, shouted, “Right!” Then he looked back into the Eye. “They’re comin’ up the pyramid steps! Gotta go. Uh…look, remember us to our families, for those of us that got ’em, okay? Man, this really sucks vacuum.”
The Marine’s face spun away from the pickup. The quietly watching military officers and civilians in the room could make out a vertical slice of green-violet sky stained by what might have been a distant cloud of smoke, the doorway into the Chamber of the Eye, looking out across the city of New Sumer. Several sharp sounds emanating from the screen—the hiss and snap of high-powered lasers, the shrill whine of power packs—filled the air. Movement, a tumble of half-glimpsed shapes, blocked out the sliver of sky momentarily. Someone screamed.
Several moments passed, punctuated by more sounds, like the cold scrabblings of claws on stone, the clink of metal, a low-voiced grunt. For just a moment another face filled the wallscreen, flat and emotionless, a reptilian face dominated by enormous, oddly shaped eyes of metallic gold, horizontally slashed by elongated pupils. The skin was green and faintly scaled, the skull elongated and topped by a low, bony crest, the mouth a black-rimmed slash. Nictitating membranes flickered over those hypnotic eyes once…twice…and then the apparition vanished.
The wallscreen flickered, then winked out. General Haslett, Army Chief of Staff for the UFR Central Military Command, stared into the dark emptiness for a moment, shocked and afraid. My God, he thought. What are we sending our people out there to face?